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Vaccines
are not only used to treat infectious diseases such as flu and measles but today
it is also being used to cure cancer diseases such as skin cancer.
There
are standard cancer therapies, some of which (Immunotherapy) uses skin cancer
vaccines, and sometimes even the vaccines are used alone.
Cancer
is a disease caused by unusual growth of cells and for the immune system of a
body both normal cells and cancer cells are same. Cancer vaccines help immune
system to come out of its tolerance of cancer cells and thus attack and kill them.
All cells whether normal or cancer has bits of protein on their surface called
antigens and many cancer cells produce cancer specific antigens. These antigens
activate white blood cells called B-lymphocytes (B cells which produces antibodies
recognizing particular antigen and helps in destroying cancer cells) and T-lymphocytes
(T cells which recognize antigen that attack and kill cancer cells).
Another approach for cancer vaccines is whole-cell vaccines. Whole-cell vaccines
may take whole cancer cells from the person suffering from the disease or use
human tumor cell lines taken from a laboratory.
Cancer vaccines show
the most promising measure of preventing a recurrence of cancer after surgery,
radiation, or chemotherapy because the immune system will need to recognize and
attack a smaller number of cancer cells. Skin cancer vaccines are also
now tested as a treatment for advanced cancer.
Cancer Vaccine Facts
1. Cancer vaccines are used for two purposes one to treat existing
cancers (therapeutic vaccines) or to prevent cancer from development (prophylactic
vaccines).
2. Therapeutic vaccines, which are given to cancer patient,
treat cancer by stimulating the immune system so that it recognizes and attack
human cancer cells without harming normal cells. While prophylactic vaccines are
given to healthy individuals in order to stimulate the immune system to attack
cancer viruses and prevent other viral infection.
3. A prophylactic
vaccine is available which fights against hepatitis B virus, an infectious
agent related to liver cancer.
4. Scientists are now evaluating several
other vaccines in large human trials to arrive to a conclusion to the most effective
approach for particular kinds of cancers.
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